Tish Plays the Game Read Online Free Page A

and had to be assisted to the cold shower. I mention this tendency of hers to sleep, as it caused us some trouble later on.
    In the meantime Tish was keeping in touch with the two young people. She asked Nettie Lynn to dinner one night, and seemed greatly interested in her golf methods. One thing that seemed particularly to interest her was Miss Lynn’s device for keeping her head down and her eye on the ball.
    “After I have driven,” she said, “I make it a rule to count five before looking up.”
    “How do you see where the ball has gone?” Tish asked.
    “That is the caddie’s business.”
    “I see,” Tish observed thoughtfully, and proceeded for some moments to make pills of her bread and knock them with her fork, holding her head down as she did so.
    Another thing which she found absorbing was Miss Lynn’s statement that a sound or movement while she drove was fatal, and that even a shadow thrown on the ball while putting decreased her accuracy.
    By the end of February we had become accustomed to the exercises and now went through them with a certain sprightliness, turning back somersaults with ease, and I myself now being able to place my flat hand on the floor while standing. Owing to the cabinet baths I had lost considerable flesh and my skin seemed a trifle large for me in places, while Aggie looked, as dear Tish said, like a picked spare rib.
    At the end of February, however, our training came to an abrupt end, owing to a certain absent-mindedness on Tish’s part. Tish and Aggie had gone to the gymnasium without me, and at ten o’clock that night I telephoned Tish to ask if Aggie was spending the night with her. To my surprise Tish said nothing for a moment, and then asked me in a strained voice to put on my things at once and meet her at the door to the gymnasium building.
    Quick as I was, she was there before me, hammering at the door of the building, which appeared dark and deserted. It appeared that the woman had gone home early with a cold, and that Tish had agreed to unfasten the bath cabinet and let Aggie out at a certain time, but that she had remembered leaving the electric iron turned on at home and had hurried away, leaving Aggie asleep and helpless in the cabinet.
    The thought of our dear Aggie, perspiring her life away, made us desperate, and on finding no response from within the building Tish led the way to an alleyway at the side and was able to reach the fire escape. With mixed emotions I watched her valiant figure disappear, and then returned to the main entrance, through which I expected her to reappear with our unhappy friend.
    But we were again unfortunate. A few moments later the door indeed was opened, but to give exit to Tish in the grasp of a very rude and violent watchman, who immediately blew loudly on a whistle. I saw at once that Tish meant to give no explanation which would involve taking a strange man into the cabinet room, where our hapless Aggie was completely disrobed and helpless; and to add to our difficulties three policemen came running and immediately placed us under arrest.
    Fortunately the station house was near, and we were saved the ignominy of a police wagon. Tish at once asked permission to telephone Charlie Sands, and as he is the night editor of a newspaper he was able to come at once. But Tish was of course reticent as to her errand before so many men, and he grew slightly impatient.
    “All right,” he said. “I know you were in the building. I know how you got in. But why? I don’t think you were after lead pipe or boxing gloves, but these men do.”
    “I left something there, Charlie.”
    “Go a little further. What did you leave there?”
    “I can’t tell you. But I’ve got to go back there at once. Every moment now—”
    “Get this,” said Charlie Sands sternly: “Either you come over with the story or you’ll be locked up. And I’m bound to say I think you ought to be.”
    In the end Tish told the unhappy facts, and two reporters, the